Miles Davis arguably reached his physical peak in 1970, the year The
Complete Jack Johnson Sessions were recorded. He was strong, off
drugs, eating "health food", in love with a new woman, and he was
immersed in a new and dynamic way of composing music, by laying down
hours of session tape and re-assembling the results into album-side-long
pieces (aided and abetted by producer Teo Macero). He was writing
a lot of new music, too, and had assembled a blue-ribbon stable of
the best young players that New York had to offer. Between mid-February
and early June, eleven Miles Davis sessions were logged, the immediate
end result being exactly one album, issued as the soundtrack to a
little-seen film about the legendary African-American heavyweight
fighter. Columbia's new release of these sessions, over six hours'
running, is a major entry in their Miles Davis boutique box reissues,
showcasing not only Miles' working methods, but some outstanding compositions
as well as gobs of hot soloing by all concerned. Swathed in shades
of black, black, and more black, the box's metal spine/binder even
sports the black-lacquered brass that Miles had on some of his horns.
It practically snarls, "I'm black all right! I'll never let you forget
it." How ironic that this shadow-box of black music emerged from such
sunny days in Miles' life. (That era would end on September 17, 1970,
the day Miles' inspiration, Jimi Hendrix, died.)

One thing to listen for in this music is Miles' experiments with making
his instrument work within a rock context. As always, Miles imagined
the overall soundscape and how each instrumentalist would contribute
to the whole. In terms of the soloing instruments, his perennial trick
was to cast someone as his foil. Miles gave himself the role of Poetic
Purity; the musician playing The Foil was on hand to provide stark
contrast. John Coltrane is the most obvious example, with his set-challenging
imperative to cram in every last note and scalar pattern into a 20-minute-plus
epic. Miles himself almost never played that way, but he cherished
musicians who could wax on with the requisite fecundity (Coltrane,
Cannonball Adderley, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett,
Dave Liebman, Sonny Fortune, Mike Stern). During the sessions that
make up the Jack Johnson release, the spoiler slot is filled mainly
by John McLaughlin (in the later sessions, Keith Jarrett starts to
muscle his way inno love lost between those two!). And although
the British wunderkind could spit out the machine-gun licks, Miles
pushed McLaughlin to concentrate more on sound and gesture. It was
the right decision. McLaughlin mines a wide range of timbres from
his instrument, but it's pretty clear Miles digs the distorted stuffat
one point (the close of "Duran", take 4), he high-fives
the guitarist with the comment, "That's some raunchy shit, John!"
Tellingly, on the super-slow blues of "Go Ahead John (Part One
Remake)", the guitar is clear and un-effected, with just a shred
of fuzz here and there. Miles' strategy may seem counter-intuitive
here, but it's pretty evident he wasn't after purity so much as simplicity
and stylistic clarity. The same is true of the famous opening jam
on "Right Off" (which, we are now able to hear, hits hard
from the very first note after Miles' count-off: "Play it up.
Play, play, play, play."). In both cases, Miles wanted to make it
clear that it was no longer "fusion" he was making (if it ever was).
"Go Ahead John" is the blues. "Right Off"
is rock, muthafucka. Album jackets from this period of his
career carried the legend "Directions in music by Miles Davis." You
better not forget it!

In this electrified, forward-leaning context, Miles intensifies his
own playing, with longer, denser runs, reaching for altissimo ranges
he'd never shown much interest in before. He leaves behind most references
to bebop or post-bop in his phrasing, instead playing simpler pentatonic
and/or chromatic lines, usually of short duration, often repeated
numerous times: like a rock guitar. Again thinking guitarishly, Miles
began mobilizing his harmon mute as a wah-wah in this periodit's
replaced with the pedal version starting with the Pascoal sessions.
Miles even gets into some "lowercase" experiments on "Yesternow
(New Take Four)", making breath-pops that are like a take on
the miscellaneous in-between sounds fingers make on amplified guitar
strings. (Those few passages where Miles chooses to string together
complex phrases more in tune with those of his pre-fusion style are
fascinating harmonic/rhythmic landmarks in the overall soloscapes.)

The sessions are suffused with electronic experimentation. Shredmeister
Sonny Sharrock is given lots of space, over four takes of "Willie
Nelson", to mess around with an Echoplex (what little of that
which made it to the original Jack Johnson release arrived
without credit to Sharrock, and the error is only now officially corrected).
Chick Corea may be heard doing some slightly more discreet echo-plexing
on some of the "Willie Nelson" takes, and more aggressively
mans the ring-modulator on both parts of "The Mask". Keith
Jarrett plays both organ and Fender Rhodes through wah-pedals, transforming
them into new instruments, and Herbie Hancock assaults a Farfisa organ
throughout the various takes that went into making "Right Off"
(the backstory on Hancock's forced encounter with the Farfisa is hilarious).
Miles plays through an octave-splitter on "Honky Tonk",
"Ali", and "Konda", making his trumpet sound as
if it's being perfectly doubled by bass clarinet. (Let's hope Bennie
Maupin didn't take it personally, being replaced by a little box.)

But the knobs 'n' switches are not central to the action. The overriding
aspect of the music contained in The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions
is the fact that it never settles down. Miles was charging furiously
ahead in this period of his career, changing musicians on a daily
basis, even switching them around while a session was going on, sometimes
mid-take. Guitarists, bassists, drummers and keyboardists all get
shuffled around in bewildering configurationsit's no wonder
many of the initial releases from this period contained misattributions.
There's no sense of finality in any of the music, which helps greatly
to lend a sense of freshness to it all. Pieces often start seemingly
in the middle and just stop whenever the leader decides they've done
enough. Notwithstanding, Miles' commitment to rock music of the Hendrix
school reaches its fullest flower power with Jack Johnson.
In comparison, much of the rock-ish jazz on Bitches Brew sounds
diffuse and tentative; the various official concert releases available
from this period are muddled and over-busy (the Fillmore East
albums, Black Beauty). Not surprisingly, Miles always seemed
more comfortable in the studio. Thanks to Teo Macero and Clive Davis,
Miles was allowed to visit the Columbia studios on a nearly weekly
basis during the spring of 1970, when these sessions were recorded.

We can be grateful to box set producers Bob Belden and Michael Cuscuna
for finally setting straight the dates and players, not to mention
making available, after over thirty years, the "4-1/2 Hours Of Brand
New Miles Davis Music!" that comprise the unissued tracks. Packaging
hype aside, there are myriad revelations and delights to savor, and
not just for Miles completists. Tons of fun may be had just trying
to guess Miles' intentions, sometimes. How, for instance, does one
account for an odd-ditty like "Sugar Ray", with its circularly
chromatic set of changes, cycled over a hiccupy stop-time beat? For
some six minutes it game-legs itself along, never landing in a groove,
yet at the end, there's Miles' signature "Teo, play some of that,"
which would seem to indicate Miles found something listenable in it.
(Bill Milkowski, in his generally good liner notes, calls it "Devo
doing boogaloo.") Then there's the astonishing "The Mask",
which comes in two wholly unrelated parts totaling over twenty-three
minutes. The first part is a dense free-for-all wherein Jarrett wah-wahs
the Rhodes over a cooking DeJohnette/Holland rhythm. It looks forward
to the 1974 "Rated X"without the gothic melodrama.
Miles does not play on it, but he joins in on part two, riding a darkly
compelling beat: Dave Holland plays walking half-notes, wandering
through modes, while DeJohnette ticks off Latin-esque rimshots and
high-hat chicks. Keyboards and electronics waft in and out, Miles
shouts and mutters, Steve Grossman fiddles on soprano, McLaughlin
skronks a bit, Airto adds some of his inimitable colorthe result
is prescient of the hypnotic breakdown section of "Ife",
recorded a couple of years later.

There's a fair amount of rough surrounding the diamonds, but not enough
to diminish the importance or enjoyment of this set. For instance,
"Ali" is trying too hard to be "groovy". Even though Jarrett
gets to romp all over it, Miles wouldn't allow himself to release
something so obvious. The same may be said of Hermeto Pascoal's "Little
High People", which is not much more than a cloying bass-line
with noodling piled on top. (Pascoal's other tunes recorded at the
same session were released on Live-Evil, and their whistling
atmospherics are like voodoo.) "Duran" is good and funky,
but evaporates from the mind after a hearing, leaving behind only
the earworm of its dangerously catchy groove (take 4 features the
aforementioned "raunchy shit" from McLaughlin).

Damn. Just when I'd sworn off jam music for good, along comes this
mutha. Cuscuna promises more to come (complete Live-Evil sessions).
It can't come too soon for me. If these guys are jamming, I'll buy
it.